first i have to admit, I dont hunt with a .223, Illinois law prohibits rifle hunting, so check caliber restrictions in your state.

That being said, When I was in the Marine Corps, we used a 62 grain bullet traveling aproximatly 3000fps. Considering a deer is a human sized animal, I suppose this would be sufficiant with good placement of the round. Being that the 62 grain bullet still has some power restrictions, I would bump that up to a 75 grain bullet traveling at least 2800fps. I'm sure there are plenty of factory loads in this range. What makes that better is that I'm sure many of these come in a hollow point configurations.

All of that taken into account, shot placemet is far more important. Heck, there are records of people taking Elephants with high speed .22 type bullets by placing the shot in the brain.

I'd look at the Barnes TSX or some other solid copper bullet if hunting big deer or at ranges over 150 yards or so. For normal deer at typical ranges any 60gr+ softpoint that shoots well in your gun will do just fine.

I shoot pigs with my 223 load, but prefer to shoot deer with a larger caliber. The 223 load is a 65 grain Sierra Gameking over about a max load of AA2230 powder and CCI primers. I must not be the only one using that 65 gr Gameking, because every time I try to reorder, I wind up being backordered for a month. If you're going to use that bullet, buy plenty of them up front.

Handloaded Hornady 55 gr. V-max. Killed 5-6 last three years all headshots. Most shots around 100 yards and don't shoot on windy days and if i can't get a good head shot I don't shoot. But they work great. Shot placement is very critical and don't worry so much to bullet as you do the accuracy has gotta be perfect

It was partially misconception on my part. All of my HP rifle bullets are meant for targets. I don't do any varmint shooting and I thought most of those had polymer tips of some kind to speed the expansion.

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Proud member of the NRA and Texas State Rifle Association. Registered and active voter.

Hollow point match bullets are pretty-much labelled on the box. Uniformity is the most important design feature, not expansion.

In general for hunting bullets, hollow points have thinner jackets. Same deal for most boat-tails. Soft points and flat-based bullets are generally designed for controlled expansion.

In the FWIW department, I have found that thin-jacketed bullets can be driven too fast for controlled expansion when it's "up close and personal", but they work well on out at longer ranges. My best example is in thirty-caliber: A Sierra 150-grain SPBT with a muzzle velocity around 3,100 ft/sec blew up in a deer's neck at around 25 yards. It always did just what I wanted for penetration and expansion, out beyond a hundred yards.

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You're from BATFE? Come right in! I use all your fine products!

I shot an 8 point buck this year with my 16" Rock River M4 shooting 223 Federal Premium ammo loaded with 60 gr. Nosler Partition bullets. One shot and he was down in about 20 yards. Both lungs and heart were completely destroyed. I will use it again.

I use a .223 depending where I am at. I like mine for close thick stuff because it is a carbine and light to carry and move around with. My shots are under 100 yards and I use factory Hornady 55 grain V-MAX Molly Coated. I shot one this year and it only went about 40 yards, pretty good considering I jumped it out of a bed and it was already moving. It destroyed a lung and the heart but those bullets usually don't leave much of a trail. Small hole in and small out, if any. They don't go far on a good hit anyway. It puts them down a lot better than my .257 Roberts does.

One or two lucky shots with inferior bullets and relatively low-powered cartridges don't mean that every future shot will result in a quick kill. If a person must hunt moderate to larger deer with a .223 Rem (or other cartridge with similar projectile/energy) I hope they'd use the best deer-sized game bullets available. Nosler Partitions and Barnes TSX would be high on my list.

Kill zones and killing shot angles are more limited with lighter projectiles because they can more easily be rendered ineffective, especially by bone impact, than more powerful generally-recognized deer rounds. Head shots are particularly risky because it's a small target that moves more than any other part of the animal.

Quartering shots should also be passed up with smaller projectiles. Going-away shots are usually a bad idea for any bullet, but much worse with a light bullet. I've seen a hind-quarter shot that made a mess of a hindquarter, but the small doe managed to run a half-mile, only to be killed by someone from another party...who kept it. A fellow hunter (B-I-L) hadn't followed instructions. Although I'd stopped using it myself, that episode resulted in shelving the .22-250 Rem for deer hunting. The experience caused the guy to never hunt again. A 30-06 and a good deer bullet would probably have killed the deer with that relatively poor shot.

Carefully placed shots in the lower neck or heart/lung, from a .223 Rem, using good game bullets at reasonable range (preferably under 200 yards) should be fine. Professional deer-management contractors in Maine successfully use .223 Rem rounds with silenced rifles and night-vision scopes at reasonably short range (over bait). Your results may vary.

About any bullet will work fine under a 100 yards. When I was a kid, I was up on a mountain and stopped to talk to a guy with a pretty fancy rig. I asked what he was shooting and he replied "6MM Remington". Well, being young and dumb I asked if he did not think that was a little light for deer. He said "Hell no! I shot at a doe last year and and blew a front leg clean off! For years that stuck in my mind and I would not drop below a .30 caliber. Eventually I figured out you had to hit a deer correctly to drop or kill it.

.223, in my opinion, is not a deer round. 243 is a bare minimum. I know some of you will strongly disagree and it's still a free country but I prefere to knock hell out of them. 30/30, 308, 30-06, heck, even a 7mm mag... these are deer rounds. I like massive blood trails should they run a bit.
Granted, a 223 will do the job with a perfect hit but I still get the fever and hate to lose an animal. I hit a nice buck once @ 60 yds with my 6mm right in the shoulder and never found him for lack of a blood trail. Since then I prefere more gun, especially for those long shots.
Just my opinion and you know they are just like bung holes, we all have them & they all stink.

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